Jae the Zoomer
by jgrantham14
Summary: Jae has a special purpose in the war. Jak can't be everywhere at once, so he formed a team called The Zoomers to be there when he can't. Jae is the best, so he gets the hardest missions. My first submission, so lets hope for the best.
1. Meet Jae

Jae woke up, as usual, to the sound of gunfire. It was closer than normal, but nothing surprising. He got out of bed, stretched, and started breakfast. Once he had finished, Jae donned the armor that would hopefully keep him alive. Jae lived in the slums of Haven City. It was dirty, damp, dark, and full of pot holes. The water was sporadic, and the food was horrible more often than not, and that was before the war started. It was a terrible place to live, but Jae wouldn't want to live anywhere else. In the slums you could disappear in a moment, and that was important in his line of work.

Jae was a Zoomer. His job was to deliver messages and do missions as fast as possible for members of the Haven City Defenders. His was an all-volunteer unit. It paid well, but there were better paying jobs. He got a nice set of armor, but the Azure Guards got better. There were no benefits, but Jae didn't care about any of that. He was a Zoomer for one thing. He did it for the speed.

Jae wasn't just any Zoomer. He was the best one since Jak himself had founded the group. He held almost every record for every route. He had been instrumental in the repulsion of the Metal Head invasion two years earlier. During the time of peace before the current war, Jae had broken his previous records on an almost weekly basis, but there was no time for competition now, lives hung in the balance. As if hearing his thoughts, Jae's buzzer sounded meaning he had a mission. He sighed, grabbed his customized jet board, and walked outside. His hover-bike was parked exactly where he had left it, a testament to both his reputation and the ignition tech in bike. He hopped on and palmed the start scanner. The start chip in his palm was the only one that could activate his personal bike, and it acted like a skeleton key to any other bike. That was the perk Jae liked the most. Unlimited access to any vehicle he wanted.

Jae activated the propulsion coils and rose to the Zoomer only flight level and started toward the main headquarters in the business section. As he did so, a KG spider bot activated and took a shot at him. Jae leaned to avoid the shot and sent one back from the pistol holstered on the bike. The spider exploded in a shower of metal and Jae went on his way. The spider worried him. The Azure Guard had always been more than capable of fending of the KG kill bots. If one was this far into the safe zone, did that mean the Azure Guards were losing? Would there be more soon, and if so, how many? Jae made a mental note to ask when he had completed his mission. After winding his way through the slums for a few minutes, Jae came to Dead Man's Turn. No one, not even Jae had managed to go through it at full speed. He slowed down and made his way to the industrial sector, where the main fighting was.

Jae managed to avoid the majority of the conflict by taking a little used maintenance tunnel that went through the sewer. He ran into a small scouting party of Metal Heads, but just a single clip of yellow Eco, and they wouldn't be reporting anything ever again. When Jae surfaced, he stunk like hell, but he was safe and had almost reached the headquarters. He powered up his bike and once again drove like the speed freak he was. He made the ten minute journey in fewer than two, a new personal best.

He pulled up to the HQ and keyed in his personal identification code. If someone didn't enter a code, or entered it wrong, the door would still open, but the elevator would go up to a normal but important looking building. But when Jae's code was put in and he stepped onto the elevator, it descended to the real building. It wasn't much, just one large room with lots of computer screens and a 3D communication relay. No one paid much attention to him until he walked past them. Many of them gaged. One person puked. Jae didn't care. He knew that there were only four people in the room, and they were gathered around the relay.

Ashelin, Keira, Torn, and of course, Jak. The four pillars of the defenders, their faces were known to every single citizen of Haven City. Without them, the city would have fallen immediately. They all cringed as Jae approached except Jak, since he had been to the sewer many times and was used to the stench. Since he was the only one who could get close to Jae, Jak was the one to brief Jae. Jak tossed Jae a small box. "Here's what you have to do. Take this over to the Power room in the industrial sector. Once there, you should be able to find an access panel. Open it, push the green button twice and drop it down the tunnel. Then, run like hell. You'll have twenty five seconds to get as far away as possible." "What happens after twenty five seconds? Or is that a stupid question," Jae asked. Jak laughed. "After twenty four seconds, a small generator produces a small spark of blue Eco. At twenty five seconds, things go-" "BOOM!" Daxter had suddenly appeared on Jae's shoulder. Jak nodded. "A large convoy of KG Killbots is going to be passing there in five minutes. Get going." Jae nodded, stuck the bomb in his pack and ran out the door.


	2. It goes wrong

As Jae rode the elevator up, he examined the bomb. It was about five inches square, with one green button and a red light. He stuck it back in his pack and ran out the door. His bike was just where he left it, hovering two feet off the ground in front of the door. Jae hopped on and pushed the engines as hard as he could. He made it out of the residential area without incident, but once he reached the industrial sector he was shot at almost immediately. The Power room was in sight when a bolt of red Eco struck his bike on the nose plate. The engine started smoking and Jae could feel it getting hotter by the second. "Shit," he swore. He had to ditch the bike, which was his fastest way to the power room, so he overloaded the elevation coils and tried to jump to the skywalk. But a second shot came from the other side, knocking him to the other side. Jae was out of options. The nearest foot ramp was too far away, and in the wrong direction. There was no other bike nearby, and he had been knocked in the wrong direction. He activated an amplifier in his armor, and then disappeared in a flash of blue and yellow eco.

A second later, another flash of Eco appeared in front of the Power room, and Jae crashed into the room. He staggered to his feet, pulling the bomb out as he got up. He found the access panel and pried it off. A long, dark tunnel was behind it. Jae double pressed the green button, tossed it down, and then did as Jak had advised him. Jae ran like hell.

Jae made it out the door, and about one hundred yards away before the bomb went off. It wasn't what he'd expected. Jae had expected a concentrated block of red Eco, but it was a dark Eco bomb. The force of the explosion knocked him off his feet and pushed him over the edge of the sky walk down to the main walk-way, a drop of more than thirty feet. The initial blast had knocked him senseless, which saved his life. The last thing he saw before he blacked out was the destroyed remains of the KG patrol.

Jae woke up in agony. Someone had laid him on his back, where he had sustained most of the damage. He couldn't move his head to see where he was, but he could tell he was still in the industrial section. He could barely see the KG war factory rotating a few miles above where he was. The sounds of the battle on the front line sounded distant. However, once Jae heard rolling toward the battle, he realized he was on the wrong side, deep in enemy territory. He heard booster rockets being fired, and he was lifted into the air, headed toward the floating war factory.


	3. Dark Jae

Jae didn't know how long he had been lying in his cell. The light never changed, and he was strapped down so he couldn't even walk around. All he could do was stare at the same panel over his head the entire time. He had been dumped there as soon as he reached the factory. The pain from the explosion had slowly been receding, but as he felt better he got angrier and angrier. He was angry at so much. He was angry at Jak for giving him the mission, he was angry at the KG kill-bots for finding him first, and he was angry at the Azure Guards for not finding him first. Jae didn't know where all of his anger was coming from. He rarely got angry, or felt any emotion other than determination to finish his mission. He knew he should only be angry at the kill-bots, but he couldn't calm down. His anger seemed to come from an outside source, one he could not identify. Most of his pain had vanished, but he didn't know if it was because he was getting better, or if he was just so mad that he couldn't feel it any more. He was almost at his breaking point when the door opened and a monster stepped into his field of sight.

Jae had never seen him up close while the monster was alive, but he had been present the night it had died. He had watched as it had been beaten by Jak in a hover race, and then it rammed into a delivery of Eco. Jae had also been at the Naughty Ottsle when it had made its first communication since that night. But now, despite everything that had happened to it, there it stood with its horrible mix of pale, human skin and its bright, reflective metal. The enigmatic leader of the KG kill-bots was the famous racer Errol.

"Hello, Jae." Errol's voice was extremely distorted, more like the robot he was than the human he had been. "I hope you are well rested. You will need to be to start paying for that convoy you blew up." Two ball bots rolled into Jae's cell and started unstrapping him. One freed his right hand and painfully jerked his arm up. Jae's rage exploded out, and it changed him.

He yanked his arm down, then struck the kill-bot at the neck joint. That ripped its head off and into the air. He also ripped the strap of his left arm, grabbed the other kill-bot, and tossed it at the other one. He ripped the remaining straps off, and launched himself at Errol. Jae rammed into an Eco barrier that separated them. Jae pounded his fist into the shield, but it just bounced his fist back. He punched it again, and again, and again, all to no effect. Jae roared at the barrier, and turned to vent his rage at the kill-bots that were in his range, but something made him pause. The head he had knocked off was almost to the floor, and the two kill-bots had just collided, and were just hitting the wall of the cell. Sparks that were trailing from the severed head seemed to be moving in slow-motion. Jae turned back around and saw to his amazement that ripples were just starting to spread out from where he had punched the barrier. As he watched, the ripples slowly spread from the center. Since his anger was receding, Jae was able think better. He realized that either everything was moving extremely slowly, or he was moving extremely fast.


End file.
